Michael Zapruder, music curator for Pandora, faces an onslaught of 400 to 800 songs every month. Yet even with a never ending supply of new music, Zapruder and his staff don’t cut any corners. Every song submitted to Pandora is analyzed by the experts at Pandora to be considered for inclusion in the collection.
“We are proud we listen to everything,” Zapruder said.
With over 40 million registered users, Pandora is not a market you want to miss out on. And, you should not. Submitting to Pandora is relatively easy, and all the steps you need to get on Pandora are steps you should be doing anyway.
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The steps to getting your music ready for submitting.
- First, you need to have a CD copy of your music with a bar code. When a recording studio agrees to record and replicate an album a bar code is often included in the fees. But watch out, it can cost as much as $99 to buy a bar code. Pandora recommends Nation Wide Barcode which charges only $10 for a bar code. You can get it the same day.
- Once your music has been reproduced into a CD format, Pandora requires that the music must be available in the physical Amazon CD store. You will need to create an account for Amazon Advantage, but there are no fees to join. It cost $29.95 per year plus a 55% standard commission on the sale of your CDs. Don’t forget to enter in all the information that Amazon lists about your music. Most importantly you need to upload the cover art for the album.
- Speaking of albums, no matter how awesome all the other songs on a CD might sound you need the rights to use every song on the album. Once Pandora accepts your music they may use all the songs on your CD.
- It is also suggested that before submitting you should collect relevant information about your fan base, selling power and music reviews. This will not help with the Music Genome Project, but it can be a good indicator to Pandora if people want to hear your music.
The simple submission process.
- Go to Pandora’s submit music form and give them all the information you have prepared. You will want to submit your best two songs from the CD you put on Amazon. Zapruder also suggests not putting in more than one submission until you know if your first CD has been approved or denied.
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You can check up on the status of your submissions, but be patient. Not only are there hundreds of submissions ahead of yours, the review process takes a long time. You just need to have the patience to wait as Pandora works their way through the songs ahead of yours. Zapruder said this process can take up to three months.
“We listen to the songs and if necessary and relevant we look up the supplemental information that the artist provided with their submission,” Zapruder said. “A decision is made on whether to accept the music or to pass on it, and that decision is added to the original submission.”
Once Pandora gets to accepts your submission, the Music Genome Project is used to analyze your songs. This process is a long list of music attributes that are rated by a group of music experts at Pandora. The rating process is extremely rigid so that all of the music analysts can give a consistent answer to questions like, “how distorted is this guitar?”
No matter what the genre, Zapruder is looking for quality music. Yet some of the more crowded genres, like four piece pop rock, can be difficult to get into. Also, some genres of music have yet to get their own genome, so Pandora would not be able to take any music of that genre regardless of quality. Don’t worry. It is very unlikely you would run across this problem if you are writing any kind of music heard in clubs in the U.S.
Good luck, and don’t forget to check out our interview with Barefoot Truth. They have over 4 million plays on Pandora.
This is part one of a three part series on Pandora Radio. Part two is an interview with Pandora Chief Strategy Officer & Founder Tim Westergren. He talked with us about how Pandora works, the future of the music industry and his advice for young bands.
The third part of the Pandora Radio series is on promoting your band and making money on Pandora. According to Westergren, 70 percent of the music on Pandora is from artist not on major labels, and Pandora pays royalties for every time a song gets played on the site. Last year Pandora paid more than $20 million in royalties.
Brett Lohmeyer is an editor for detone8.com, and in the day you can find him at
useful article, but why would mr. lohmeyer assume that we “are writing any kind of music heard in clubs in the U.S.” at all?
Thanks for the comment! As far as I know Pandora Radio is only allowed to play in the U.S. (The CSO Tim Westergren said they are having problems with royalties in other countries) So, I assumed that readers would be U.S. bands and musicians. I’ll try to address international music more in in part 2 of our Pandora articles.
Thanks again for the comment, we love getting good feedback.
Not only that, but if you want your music on pandora, you probably know what pandora is. and everyone knows pandora doesn’t do “Classical” or “orchestral” music, of any era; among other types of music.
thanks for this guide, i tried to get my music on iTunes to get it on pandora a couple of years ago, but the iTunes people never got back to me.
So i’ll just do this
I’d have to disagree genewitch, Pandora most certainly DOES do Classical Music! I personally have stations that play Classical works from all eras. From Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart though Romantic composers such as Debussy, Ravel and Chopin. Modern and Post-modern Minimalist composers such as Philip Glass and Arvo Part are also represented on the site. Maybe if you wanted your music on Pandora you should look into knowing it a bit better yourself, and not be so quick to dismiss the music which developed the very tonal music you enjoy today.
Damn right!
There is obviously a lot to know about this. I think you made some good points Features also.
Great article, I was wondering if pandora was just for major label artists.
Well that’s about it… I give up. There is no opening in the music industry for starving artists anymore. The music buisiness used to be all about the starving blues artists, now its just rich kids who can buy their way into it, and big business owned by people who DO NOT CARE about the artists…
So you have to have your music albumized, with a bar code, pay a bagillion fees, and then THREE MONTHS LATER, the MIGHT CONSIDER putting your tunes up… I can’t believe I thought this was an option.
I’m selling my studio. It’s wicked pointless.
I was just reading some of the frustration in some of the postings. The music industry is a rough one, just about everyone that has been in it has had feelings and thoughts that they are never going to move forward but you will never know if your turn is right around the corner if you quit trying. You have to love making music to be in this industry because if you don’t make it at least you still have the love for the music you are making!